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Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science:
Florida

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Look at National Findings
Goal

The state should ensure that science teachers know all the subject matter they are licensed to teach.

Meets goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science: Florida results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/FL-Secondary-Teacher-Preparation-in-Science-6

Analysis of Florida's policies

Commendably, Florida does not offer a certification in general science for secondary teachers.

Middle school science teachers in Florida must earn at least a bachelor's degree in general science or middle grades general science or a bachelor's degree with 18 semester hours in science that includes credit in biological science, chemistry or physics, and earth-space science or earth science. They must also pass the FTCE "Middle Grades General Science" exam.

Florida has approved the repeal of its middle grades integrated curriculum certification, which will now ensure specific content certification rather than an integrated model. 

Citation

Recommendations for Florida

State response to our analysis

Florida was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis.

    • Best practice
    • Meets goal
    • Nearly Meets goal
    • Meets goal in part
    • Meets a small part of goal
    • Does not meet goal

  • Florida

    Florida map
Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social Studies
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Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
Research rationale

For an examination of how science teacher preparation positively impacts student achievement, see Goldhaber, D., & Brewer, D. (2000). Does teacher certification matter? High school certification status and student achievement, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 22, 129-145; Monk, D. (1994). Subject area preparation of secondary mathematics and science teachers and student achievement, Economics of Education Review, 12(2):125-145; Rothman, A., (1969). Teacher characteristics and student learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 6(4), 340-348.  

See also, NCTQ "The All-Purpose Science Teacher: An Analysis of Loopholes in State Requirements for High School Science Teachers."(2010). 

In addition, research studies have demonstrated the positive impact of teacher content knowledge on student achievement.  For example, see D. Goldhaber, "Everyone's Doing It, But What Does Teacher Testing Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness?" Journal of Human Resources, vol. XLII no.4 (2007).  See also Harris, D., and Sass, T., "Teacher Training, Teacher Quality and Student Achievement". Teacher Quality Research (2007). Evidence can also be found in White, Presely, DeAngelis "Leveling up: Narrowing the teacher academic capital gap in Illinois," Illinois Education Research Council (2008); D. Goldhaber and D. Brewer, "Why Don't Schools and Teachers Seem to Matter? Assessing the impact of Unobservables on Educational Productivity." Journal of Human Resources (1998).

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